THE EDUCATION WE WANT

Education is not the amount of informatoin that is put into your brain and runs rioit there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library.

EQUALITY OF WOMEN

RAISE THE WOMEN

If you do not raise the women, who are the living embodiment of the Divine Mother, don't think that you have any other way to rise. That country and that nation which do not respect women have never become great, nor will ever be in future.

TEST OF TRUTH

TRUTH MUST BE ENLIGHTENING

It is the man-making religion that we want. It is the man-making theories that we want. It is the man-making education all round that we want.

And here is the test of truth - anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison;there is no life in it, it cannot be true.Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.

MEANING OF RELIGION

RELIGION MEANS REALISATION

Religion does not consist in doctrines or dogmas. It is not what you read, nor what dogmas you believe that is of importance, but what you realise.

Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organisations. Religion consisits in realisation.

A man may believe in all the churches in the world, he may carry in his head all the sacred books ever written, he may baptise himself in all the rivers of the earth, still, if he has no perception of God, I would class him with the rankest atheist. And a man may have never entered a church or a mosque, nor performed any ceremony, but if he feels God within himself and is thereby lifted above the vanities of the world, that man is a holy man, a saint, call him what you will.

Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man. Religion is the idea which is raising the brute unto man, and man unto God.

MEANING OF LIFE

LIVING FOR OTHERS

So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them! I call those men who strut about in their finery, having got all their money by grinding the poor, wretches, so long as they do not do anything for those two hundred millions who are now no better than hungry savages!

Life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

UNITY OF RELIGIONS

Upon the Banner of every Religion will soon be written, inspite of resistance : "Help and not fight", "Assimilation and not Destruction","Harmony and Peace and not Dissention".
- In the Address at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 11th September, 1893.

The Christians is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.
- In the Address at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 15th September, 1893.

FEARLESSNESS

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the upanishads , bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance , it is the word , fearlessness . And the only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness . Either in this world or in the world of religion , it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin . It is fear that brings misery , fear that brings death , fear that breeds evil .